


Gestalt

by Pyreite



Series: The Shepard's Fate [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Canonical Character Death, Eternity, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Lies, Post-Mass Effect 3, Sad Ending, Unhappy Ending, holograms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 17:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11468607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyreite/pseuds/Pyreite
Summary: [Post-ME-3, Control Ending] The world Shepard loved is ashes.  The turian she adored long dead.   Shepard still remembers the rhythms of her life even as she lingers, ever-young, as an AI with a human soul.





	Gestalt

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited.

Shepard stared out into the cosmos. The drifting stars glittered like diamonds in the blackness of space. She had once travelled through the voids between worlds. She had been awed by the tiny planets, asteroids, and moons revolving around golden suns. Shepard was still moved by the beauty of life evolving on each world. The Reapers hungered for knowledge as they hungered for life.

Shepard craved her humanity too, though she would never be human again. She was akin to those soul-less ships. She was dead inside too, a facsimile of life, something artificial. Shepard smiled at the irony of her continued existence. She wasn't alive, but she still remembered the rhythms of her life. 

Shepard paced when she was restless. She felt fatigued early in the morning. Her chest expanded and contracted as she inhaled and exhaled without breathing. She missed the sweetness of chocolate, though she no longer had a tongue to taste. She relied on her memories preserved inside the gestalt of the Reaper consciousness.

Shepard sighed. She hated being what she was, even if the sacrifice had been necessary. A small part of her wished that she'd been selfish. She could have had the life she'd wanted. She could have woken up every morning beside the one she'd loved. She could have had the big house, the white picket fence, and a gaggle of children.

“Shepard”, grumbled Harbinger. The Reaper's disembodied voice washed through the darkness like a tidal wave. “Do not dwell on the past”. Shepard rolled her eyes, a reflex whenever her chaperone tried to act paternal. She hated Harbinger even as he guided her through the complexities of being the Reaper Master AI.

“I'll dwell if I want too”, snapped Shepard. 

She folded her arms across her armoured chest. It wasn't disconcerting to still be dressed in her battle-gear. The hard-suit was scratched, chipped, and scorched from years of use. Shepard idly ran a gauntleted finger over the N7 monogram on the collar of her breastplate.

She could still feel the raised metal and the straight edges. Shepard sighed wistfully. “I can't help, but miss the life I had and the people I loved”. Her eyes closed as she recalled her lover's face when she'd left him in the Normandy's cargo-bay. He'd stared at her like a lost little boy.

“I bet it's convenient for you to forget”, accused Shepard, “that I was human before I became an AI”. She scowled when light coalesced beyond her in a sea of fireflies. The shared Reaper consciousness was a constant irritation. Shepard hated how she was unable to keep her most intimate memories to herself.

Harbinger was aware of the ghost that lingered at the forefront of her thoughts. He mimicked her lover's form in an unconscious attempt to minimise her suffering. The Reaper Master AI should not harbour regret. She had transcended her mortal coil. She was perfection incarnate - the goddess inside the machine.

She was more than a disillusioned organic.

Shepard flinched when blunted talons stroked her cheek. She glanced over her shoulder as Harbinger tried to soothe her ire. “Back off!” snarled Shepard. She glared into the sea-blue eyes of her beloved replicated from fringe to toe as a hologram. He was silver-plated and contrite as he called to her in that familiar flanging voice.

“Let me help you”.

Shepard shook her head in denial. She turned to face him as he advanced. Armoured plates clanked as he converged on her with single-minded determination. Shepard grimaced when her palm slammed into the broad collar of his hard-suit. She was perturbed by his tangibility as her fingers splayed over his armoured chest.

“Stop!”, hissed Shepard. She bared her teeth when a gauntleted turian hand reached forward. She wrenched her fingers from his armour in a blur of agitation. Shepard grasped his wrist, catching him mid-reach, before he could touch her. “I order you to stop this fucking parody! Now!” 

The hologram of her lover flickered like a candle-flame in a gust of wind. Harbinger's gauntleted fingers trembled as he was restrained by his own Reaper programming. Silver-grey mandibles twitched in distress. Harbinger opened his mouth, revealing two rows of jagged teeth. He implored Shepard to reconsider. He would don a thousand different guises if he could relieve her distress for a single moment.

“Shepard. Please”.

“No!”

The rejection wounded Harbinger soul-deep. His body was a gargantuan metal construct that contained at it's centre a very organic heart. His agony was real as he trembled from the inside out. Girders supporting gigantic steel bulkheads quaked. Rivets popped as power-conduits burst into flame.

Red light flooded the bridge. Klaxons blared as Shepard glowered at the holographic replica of her turian lover. “You can look like him”, said the Reaper Master AI. “You can sound like him”. She watched with satisfaction when Harbinger's holographic form crumpled like a porcelain doll. His eyes were glazed with agony as his armour-plated knees hit the floor with a clang.

Shepard looked down her nose at the apparition cowering at her feet. Harbinger had duplicated her lover to perfection. The plates of his hard-suit gleamed like polished silver. His cheeks, the bridge of his nose, and the bony arches of his mandibles bore the Vakarian family markings. Shepard was unmoved by Harbinger's pain when she saw the web of burns scarring the right side of his face.

“You might fool someone else”, she snarled. “But you can’t fool me. I know what you are”.

Shepard’s knees bent as she sank to the floor before him. She released the hologram's wrist in favour of something more intimate. Harbinger groaned in Garrus's flanging voice when her fingers slid under his chin. Shepard cupped his face in the palm of her hand. She was gentle as Harbinger nuzzled the thumb brushing his mouth-plates.

Shepard leaned forward. She opened her mouth, tongue flicking teasingly across her lips. Harbinger met her half-way with an eagerness that annoyed her. His mandibles spread wide as his jaws unhinged. He purred like a contented feline, the soft skin of his throat throbbing like a beating heart.

Harbinger was disappointed as Shepard avoided his mouth. She turned her head aside, pressed her cheek to his temple, and whispered into the canal of his ear. “I know you're not, Garrus”. Shepard was bathed in a sea of red and a haze of smoke as Harbinger buried his face in her shoulder. His flanging entreaties, rough with want, fell on deaf ears.

“I will be anything you want! I will be everything you need! You only have to tell me what to do! Please, Shepard! It hurts to be disconnected from you!”

Shepard offered Harbinger neither comfort nor tenderness. Her fingers closed around the nape of his plated-neck. She hooked an arm around his shoulders as the world burned. Shepard clenched her teeth as she committed the ultimate sin. She dropped her elbow, shoulder rolling, and snapped his neck.

Bone crunched. Warm air exhaled on Harbinger's dying breath rustling Shepard's hair. Garrus's holographic doppelgänger sagged like a broken puppet, strings cut. Shepard closed a hand around his temples. She eased his lids closed over those dead staring blue eyes.

Shepard sighed when the hologram dissolved into a sea of fireflies. Her hand slapped the grated metal floor. Harbinger's internal security systems extinguished the flames licking his insides. Shepard was awash in a rolling tide of carbon-dioxide gas. She inhaled the deadly mist though she didn't have lungs to breathe.

“You know it's a waste of time trying to win me over, Harbinger”, said Shepard. She sank onto the floor of the bridge as the Reaper dreadnought cruised through space. Harbinger was a better pilot than a companion. Shepard folded her long legs, bent her knees, and wrapped her arms around her shins. She glared when she was engulfed in a sea of red light.

Harbinger's voice boomed like thunder. “I know”.

Shepard snorted. “Then why persist?” His silence was telling when he refused to dignify her question with an answer. Shepard rolled her eyes. “You always were a stubborn, old bastard”.

And so they would play this game, time and time again, for aeons until Shepard accepted what she was.

Until she chose not to be lonely.

Harbinger had waited two billion years for her.

What was a billion more?


End file.
